Many things hold little Southern towns together. There is a common love of the region, the peace that comes with a rural life and, often, prayer.

In this town of 2,300, people drew on all of those as they endured what by Thursday night had stretched into an unimaginable situation.

A relative newcomer to town - a man who fought in Vietnam and appeared to harbor a deep distrust of government and a grudge against every neighbor - shot and killed a bus driver, grabbed a 5-year-old boy named Ethan and then disappeared with the boy into a well-equipped bunker he spent several months digging in his yard.

By all accounts, the man neighbors and a sheriff's office official identified as Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, had no connection to the boy.

Like so many clerics here, Senn has been leading prayer services as the hours stretched into days.

By Thursday night, no end was in sight. The FBI stayed in contact with Dykes by day and let him sleep at night, said Police Chief James Arrington of Pinckard, a nearby city.

"They're taking time and trying to wear him out," he said. "He may do harm if they try to rush him."

No one is sure exactly why he took the boy.

"He don't care too much for the government," Arrington said. "That's all we know."

The boy is reportedly doing well in the bunker, an Alabama state senator, Harri Anne Smith, said in a television interview early Thursday. She and Alabama state Rep. Steve Clouse have met with Ethan's mother, and said food and medication her son needed for autism was delivered to the bunker through a 60-foot plastic pipe.

Still, Clouse said, the family is "just holding on by a thread."

Prayer vigils abounded, and it did not take long for churchgoers to join the Salvation Army and the Red Cross in efforts to feed law enforcement officers from at least eight agencies.

"Everybody wants to help, everybody is talking about the boy," said Lisa Boatwright, a secretary at a nearby church. "But there's only one thing we can do: pray this ends safely."